Terrorism: More Insights

The British foreign secretary, an excuse protruding from a suit wrapped around a feebler excuse, has provided his own theological commentary on the latest pronouncements of Reverend Blair. An independent organisation specialising in foreign affairs has found that one of our main problems in preventing terrorism is the fact that Britain "is riding as a pillion passenger with the United States in the war against terror".

The disciple is astonished. "I'm astonished", Straw said, "that Chatham House is now saying that we should not have stood shoulder to shoulder with our long-standing allies in the United States". Straw must have a rather tenuous grasp of where a pillion passenger rides. It isn't shoulder to shoulder, and it certainly isn't in a driving seat.

Apparently Chatham House and its fellow Islamofascist-licker, the Economic and Social Research Council, have got behind the times a little. Straw put them straight: "The time for excuses for terrorism is over." Goody. Does that mean we can dispense with Reverend Blair's invocations of democracy the Halliburton way as an excuse for blowing people up?

The two hotbeds of evil also said that the Iraq mess had given al-Qaeda "a boost" and that "The UK is at particular risk because it is the closest ally of the United States". Naturally, this is not to be believed. We have heard it from the Saviour of Baghdad himself: terrorists are not motivated by opposition to anything, but by pure evil, mad fanaticism, utter devilishness and being just all-fired Bad.

Straw cited Saturday's attack in Turkey as a sign that terrorists "will seek any excuse". Turkey "was not supporting our action in Iraq", therefore the terrorists in Turkey could not have been motivated by our action in Iraq, therefore the terrorists in Britain could not have been motivated by our action in Iraq. They're all the same, you see. They just have to kill innocent people, so they go around looking for excuses to do it. Poor bastards probably can't even help themselves.

It's a jolly good thing we are ruled by people like Reverend Blair and his humble acolyte - not forgetting, of course, the chimp in the driving seat of the remote-control battlebike whose pillion we have the honour to occupy. If we allowed ourselves to be seduced by others, less willing to understand the motives of the terrorists, less able to exercise Reverend Blair's God-given, almost participatory insight into their hermetically murderous minds - why, I don't know what we'd do. We might start feeling unsafe.